The Doctor's Wife (TV story)
The Doctor's Wife 'is the fourth episode of the sixth series of ''Doctor Who. It was written by Neil Gaiman, directed by Richard Clark and featured Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, Karen Gillan as Amy Pond and Arthur Darvill as Rory Williams. Overview To be added Synopsis While traveling in the TARDIS with Amy and Rory, the Doctor hears a knock on the TARDIS doors. Bewildered and no doubt curious, he answers, only to be presented with a mysterious box which carries a distress signal. Believing it to be from a fellow Time Lord, the cosmic nomad whisks himself and his companions outside the boundaries of the universe on what should be a rescue mission. But what everyone finds is a dark Junk-yard planet populated by the bizarre Auntie, Uncle and Nephew. Last and not least among the strange inhabitants is a mentally unstable woman that goes by the name of Idris... Plot In the middle of a desolate junkyard, two deformed figures known as Auntie and Uncle escort an equally bedraggled woman named Idris to a grate illuminated by a green light and mist. They inform her that the procedure she is due for will drain her mind and soul from her body, ready to be possessed by a new occupant, heralded by the coming arrival of a Time Lord. Meanwhile, in the TARDIS, while the Doctor rattles off an anecdote, Rory notices Amy is still dwelling on their having witnessed the Doctor's death in the future when the door suddenly knocks from outside in deep space. The Doctor opens it and is thrust upon by a small white cube with a snake sigil on it - a Time Lord Psychic container sent by an old friend of his, the Corsair. As he sets to follow the signal, the TARDIS goes haywire as it flies through a breach out of the main universe and towards a small planetoid in the middle of a black void. When the TARDIS lands, the console room goes completely dead, as if the Matrix of the TARDIS has simply disappeared. At the same time, Idris' body is suddenly overwhelmed by similar energy and starts emanating a golden light as the TARDIS's engines sound around her. The Doctor, Amy and Rory step out into the dilapidated wasteland to look around; while he explains where they are, Idris runs up to him from around the corner, branding him her 'thief, before promptly kissing and biting him in quick succession. As she starts making obscure predictions about how 'the little boxes will make Doctor angry', she collapses and Auntie and Uncle send their Ood associate Nephew to place her in a cage. Before he goes, the Doctor examines Nephew's translator sphere and it starts playing various cries for help from various Time Lords to Gallifrey, including the Corsair. Auntie and Uncle offer to introduce the Doctor to House, the sentience of the planet they are on, while he expresses his desire to find the other Time Lords that are on the planet to Amy and Rory. While Idris rattles off nonsense in her prison, Auntie and Uncle bring the Doctor to the center of the junkyard when House starts talking through them. The Doctor offhandedly tells House that there won't be any more TARDISes after his as he's the last Time Lord and he, Amy and Rory go to look around. On the way, the Doctor sends his companions to get is sonic screwdriver from the TARDIS, but when they arrive, the Doctor, who'd been carrying his screwdriver the whole time, locks them inside while he goes to look for the Time Lords. As he searches, he hears a number of cries for help from a nearby locker and opens it up to find the distress signals of the Time Lords that had been there before. The Doctor demands to know from Auntie and Uncle what happened to the Time Lords they'd lured when he notices that all of their bodily features are patchworked together by House. He notices Auntie has the Corsair's arm and is horrified to learn that House had cannibalised his body to patch up his puppets when they needed fixing. Incensed, he sends them away and storms off to Idris' cage, demanding answers. In the TARDIS, Amy and Rory figure out that the Doctor's request was a ruse to send them away when the notice House's essence consuming the TARDIS outside. Idris cryptically reveals to the Doctor that she is the TARDIS, having had her Matrix placed inside a corporeal body so that House can feed off the remaining artron energy. The Doctor runs back to the TARDIS to get Amy and Rory out but arrives just as House finishes possessing the ship and departs without him, taking the ship back through the breach towards the main universe with Amy and Rory still inside. The Doctor returns to Idris as Auntie and Uncle come to relay House's plans before just dropping dead. As Idris informs the Doctor they have to return to where she'd landed, she recoils in pain, her Matrix starting to break apart her flesh body. Remembering where he's been stranded, in a TARDIS junkyard, the Doctor has the idea to jury rig a functioning TARDIS console using hundreds of thousands of broken pieces and parts. In the TARDIS, Rory convinces House not to kill them by pointing out that it wouldn't be any fun, addressing the fact that he kept Auntie and Uncle around to amuse him. To this end, he orders them to run and they try to stay alive in the corridors with House interfering with the ship's systems and architecture to torment them. In the junkyard, the Doctor and Idris work on the junk console when the Doctor gets fed up of her pestering and accuses her of never having been that reliable, pointing out that she barely ever took him where he wanted to go, but she counters by declaring that she instead always took him where he needed to go. This stops the Doctor dead in his tracks as one of Idris' kidneys fail, giving her body less than 20 minutes to live before her matrix breaks it apart; in spite of the risks of trying to pilot a TARDIS with no proper shell, they both agree to hurry up. As Amy and Rory race around the TARDIS hallways, they get separated by a door when Amy rounds a corner to find Rory sitting there, having been waiting for hours. As they press on, they are separated by another door; this time, when Amy finds Rory, he's been sat waiting for 2000 years and he angrily rants at her before a door closes between them. In the junkyard, the Doctor and Idris attempt to launch the junk TARDIS, but it can't hold the power to take off. Idris provides the console with some of her own energy and it dematerialises in a fury of energy. As Amy wanders the corridors alone again, she finds graffiti scrawled all over it despising her and discovers Rory as a desiccated corpse lying on the floor. As she sobs, the real Rory appears behind her, the previous encounters having been illusions concocted by House to torture them. The junk TARDIS follows the Doctor's into the rift and Idris sends Rory a telepathic message implanting the route to an old archived console room into his head so they can lower the ship's shields and allow them entry when they get close. As they head toward the old console room, they run into Nephew, having been placed to pursue them by House. When they reach the door to the old control room, Idris sends Rory the passkey and Amy, remembering the meaning Idris had imparted earlier, opens the door by mentally inputting the passkey; they get into the old console room and lower the shields as Idris had instructed, allowing the Doctor and Idris the chance to get inside in the junk TARDIS, though the landing reduces Nephew to his atoms. House takes over the old console room and ponders how to dispose of them as Idris collapses from the strain on her body. The Doctor offers to help House get through to the main universe and suggests that he delete 30% of the TARDIS architecture to allow for the thrust to make the journey. House attempts to dispose of them at the same time by deleting the old console room first but the security protocols place them all back in the main one. However, this plays to the Doctor's plan as the TARDIS matrix has made it back to it's home and starts to extrude itself through the control room, snuffing out House's essence completely once the matrix is fully reinstalled. As the systems restore, Idris calls out to the Doctor and has a heartfelt-discussion with him, finally remembering to say 'Hello' to him and promising that she'd always be with him, letting him know that she loves him as she disappears and becomes one with her old home again, leaving the Doctor tearful. Later on, the Doctor sets up a firewall around the matrix to prevent any further possible attacks and works at reconstructing Amy and Rory's bedroom, which was deleted in the program. After they leave to go and find it, the Doctor remains behind in the control room, talking to the TARDIS, only half-hoping for a response. Suddenly, the engines launch themselves, a sign that the TARDIS is still with him as she'd promised as he continues piloting excitedly. Cast * The Doctor - Matt Smith * Amy Pond - Karen Gillan * Rory - Arthur Darvill * Idris - Suranne Jones * House - Michael Sheen * Nephew - Paul Kasey * Uncle - Adrian Schiller * Auntie - Elizabeth Berrington Crew To be added References To be added Story Notes To be added Continuity To be added Home video and audio releases To be added External Links * Official ''The Doctor's Wife'' page on '''Doctor Who Website